People named John and Mary never divorce. For better or for worse, in madness and in saneness, they seem bound together for eterni...ty by their rudimentary nomenclature. They may loathe and despise one another, quarrel, weep, and commit mayhem, but they are not free to divorce. Tom, Dick, and Harry can go to Reno on a whim, but nothing short of death can separate John and Mary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

... in the nineteen-thirties ... the most casual reader of murder mysteries could infallibly detect the villain, as soon as there ...entered a character who had recently washed his neck and did not commit mayhem on the English language.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

I wouldn't wish the eighties on anyone, it was the time when all that was rotten bubbled to the surface. If you were not at the re...ceiving end of this mayhem you could be unaware of it. It was possible to live through the decade preoccupied by the mortgage and the pence you saved on your income tax. It was also possible for those of us who saw what was happening to turn our eyes in a different direction; but what, in another decade, had been a trip to the clap clinic was now a trip to the mortuary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Of our major professional sports, golf alone retains the lyrical innocence with which it began centuries ago among Scottish herdsm...en slapping the gutta-percha ball around the bonny banks. Golf alone, despite huge purses, has remained immune to the violence and vulgarity that have turned other sports into spectacles of sanctioned mayhem. The game, as Andrew Carnegie believed, is an "indispensable adjunct of high civilization." No other group of professionals is self-ruled by an honor code in which players call penalties on themselves. Golf etiquette prevails. Can football etiquette or hockey etiquette be imagined? Golf has no Charles Barkley, who has spit at fans. It has no John McEnroe, the obscenity-shouter, nor does it have enforcers, late-hitters, or self-absorbed clods who moan that they aren't paid enough.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian ...steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi'ite fundamentalists.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The differences between the youthful H.G. Wells and the mature Henry James were so basic and numerous that it seems almost miracul...ous that they ever knew each other well enough to have started a feud. James was fastidious and was preoccupied in many of his works with matters of taste and high society. Wells could be slovenly, considered James's taste artificial, and found any young scientist far more interesting than a room full of dukes and duchesses. James was an artist who seemed to feel the chief value of life was to give him subjects for his novels. Wells wanted to have a hand in reshaping life and constructing a new world, and considered his books merely useful tools toward these ends. James would agonize for hours over a single sentence, refining and refining it until sometimes only his most devoted readers cared to thread their way through the innumerable clauses he found necessary for communication of his exact meaning. Wells scoffed at such painstaking craftsmanship, and preferred to state his ideas so that even the slowest reader could follow him without difficulty. James was an artist, however tortured his sentences finally became. Wells was a propagandist, however skillfully he stated his sometimes complex ideas.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »